Archive for the ‘Affiliate Marketing’ Category

Two years ago, I featured cooking affiliate programs as my Niche of the Week. My cooking has improved greatly since I wrote that article, and so I have moved on to learning baking. I decided this week, while searching for yet another pastry recipe to try, that I might as well feature baking as my Niche of the Week. 2 topics, 1 round of research. Yes. Because it’s fun to multi-task. 🙂

According to AmericanBakers.org, the baking industry accounts for about USD $300 billion in total economic output. More than a million Americans were employed, directly or indirectly, within the industry.

But never mind the statistics. Just head on over to Pinterest, or Google any recipe, and you’ll find plenty of websites full of baking recipes, clever decorating ideas, and tips to make your recipes turn out great. I’m telling you now, you’ll be competing with A LOT of other websites in this niche. A thorough research into the niche though will help you select a good angle for your site and map out a marketing strategy.

Keywords: Sharp and Piping Hot

Yes, that’s right. Forgive the mixed metaphors here, but the keywords in this niche need to be sharp, precise, on the point, like a good knife. You’ll know they are because they will be piping hot and highly competitive, too.

You can go for the general, information keywords like “baking,” “bread recipes,” or “pastry.” These are low competition keywords with good monthly search values.

How does this work then?

I suggest you get a good fusion of product-specific, buyer-intent, and informative how-to keywords. This means baking recipes and guides sprinkled with product reviews here and there.

Baking Affiliate Programs

As you probably know, I always check ClickBank before I venture out onto the web in search of affiliate programs. The ClickBank Marketplace did not disappoint this time. I was able to find several baking affiliate programs in the MarketPlace that are worth looking into.

Keikos-Cake.com

Professional pastry chef and instructor Keiko shares her knowledge of how to create delicious baked confections through her website. She offers site members exclusive video lessons and unique recipes, too.

The recurring commission is 50% per sale.

The Macaron Master

If Keiko’s shows you how to make scrumptious bakery goodies, The Macaron Master shows you how to make delicate macarons. Their step by step guide shows you how to master macaron making and turn it into a home business.

Commission is at 35% per sale.

Turning Cupcakes Into Cash

Macarons not your thing? How about cupcakes? Turning Cupcakes Into Cash is for cupcake lovers what The Macaron Master is to macaron fans. Learn how to make cupcakes, and turn it to cash.

Unlike The Macaron Master, each sale of this product gets you 50% commission.

Cake Decorating Business Secrets

Another home business that stems from a baking skill: cake decorating. This guide to making a business out of decorating cakes offers affiliates 75% commission per sale.

As we’ve already seen today, affiliate marketing is a relatively trouble-free way for bloggers and other website owners to earn money. In fact, these days, even social media sites can become lucrative platforms for affiliate marketing campaigns.

Because affiliate marketing doesn’t require affiliates to offer their own products or services for purchase, but only to place promotions on their sites for other merchants’ products, it frees affiliates from many of the responsibilities and complications of traditional sales models.

Affiliate marketing programs typically work by having the merchant handle all the logistics involved in selling products or services, processing customer orders and payments, and shipping merchandise—all while the affiliate sits back and collects a commission for each agreed-upon action completed by the visitors the affiliate sends to the merchant’s website via an affiliate link. As long as the affiliate has done her homework and chosen a trustworthy affiliate program, she needn’t worry about non-payment.

Affiliate networks administer programs for individual merchants, handling all the work involved, while generally providing tracking and reporting capabilities to their affiliates to help them keep tabs on their revenues and determine which products or services are producing the best returns. These tools can be helpful to an affiliate in fine-tuning the line of products she decides to promote on her site and, ideally, increasing revenues as a result.

However, all affiliate programs are not created equal. Which are the most popular programs available today?

Reportedly the largest affiliate network, with over 10 million affiliate partnerships, LinkShare took the number-one spot in the Blue Book of Top 20 Affiliate Networks for platform strength, support quality, and international capabilities.

LinkShare offers over 2,500 affiliate programs and lets you choose whether to have every aspect of your affiliate channel managed for you or whether you would rather manage your own program using the company’s various service and support options.

Said to be the largest affiliate marketing network in North America (though it operates globally) and claiming the number-two spot in the Blue Book of Top 20 Affiliate Networks for being “the best at balancing the relationship between the merchants, the network, and the affiliates,” California-based Commission Junction, owned by ValueClick, Inc., offers affiliate, media, and tracking services and provides either a self-management or company-managed option for your affiliate relationships.

In addition to its regular pay-per-action affiliate program, the company also offers a convenient PayPerCall program to help affiliates “ensure they get paid commission for the leads they generate, thus further monetizing existing ad placements and having the opportunity to expand their promotional…online and offline campaigns.”

Claiming the number-three spot in the Blue Book of Top 20 Affiliate Networks for being the “overall best performance marketing network in the world today,” Chicago-based ShareASale has over 2,500 merchant programs and features brands such as HootSuite and PS Print.

ShareASale has received excellent ratings, with the company’s reputation/security, ethics, customer service, and ease of commission payment receiving glowing reviews.

Placing fourth in the Blue Book of Top 20 Affiliate Networks, for a reporting system that “far surpasses other big networks,” this is one of the largest and most diverse affiliate programs available.

As most people know, Amazon.com offers such a wide array of products that there’s bound to be something to fit your niche. In fact, they offer over a million products from which you can choose to monetize your website or blog. Amazon Associates is a pay-per-sale affiliate program.

Google Affiliate Network is a pay-per-action network that pays commissions to its affiliates for driving conversions (sales or leads). The network requires a Google AdSense account for posting ads to the affiliate’s website or blog and facilitating affiliate payments.

ClixGalore is an Australian PPA (pay-per-action) affiliate network that also has offices in the US, UK, and Japan. The company offers various types of programs, including PPM (pay-per-impression), PPL (pay per lead), PPS (pay-per-sale), and PPC (pay-per-click). Many programs pay in US dollars.

Some well-known brands that use ClixGalore for their affiliate offerings are Bluehost, Time Life, Trend Micro, Citibank, and Fox Sports Shop. While not as widely known as some of the other affiliate networks, ClixGalore is a solid network that offers thousands of potential merchant programs. The network also offers a two-tier network. By referring other affiliates to the network, current affiliates can receive a portion of their earnings.

PeerFly is a PPA network with its own proprietary software system. The network made the Blue Book of Top 20 Affiliate Networks, which stated regarding them, “They are courteous, helpful, and point you in the right direction.”

The network also took the number-four spot in the Blue Book of Top 20 CPA Networks, for its high popularity, great staff, and excellent platform. PeerFly accepts publishers from all over the world and offers thousands of merchant programs.

A well-known affiliate network, ClickBank features digital products, such as e-books, software, and membership sites. The program reportedly offers up to 75% commissions on its tens of thousands of products. Commissions are paid weekly, and direct deposit is available to its affiliates.

MaxBounty came in sixth in the Blue Book of Top 20 CPA Networks, though it didn’t make a showing in the Blue Book’s top 20 affiliate networks. In business since 2004, the network was founded on the philosophy of paying its affiliates more.

MaxBounty pays affiliate commissions weekly, and the company appears to have a good reputation among its affiliates. In fact, the network is popular among many top affiliate marketers and has received numerous positive reviews and writeups and critiques over the past several years.

Neverblue is a pay-per-action affiliate program that pays its affiliates for lead, download, and sale generation, as well as for new affiliate referrals. While Neverblue didn’t make the Blue Book of Top 20 Affiliate Networks, it did take the number-one spot in the Blue Book of Top 20 CPA Networks.

Despite this, the affiliate program has stated the following: “This filing will not impact Neverblue’s ability to meet client needs in any way—we intend to continue to operate business as usual without interruption. Neverblue’s business is fundamentally strong and we intend to make all affiliate payments on schedule, in a timely and reliable manner.”

Its management is just as confident that the sale will not affect Neverblue’s ability to meet its affiliates’ needs in any way. While this company tends to inspire high confidence among affiliates, you’ll have to decide whether to jump in now or wait a while to see how things go after the sale.

What’s your favorite network?

If you’ve been thinking of trying affiliate marketing to monetize your blog, consider testing these ten programs to see whether they fit your niche and audience. If you’ve used any of these programs, we’d love to hear your thoughts on them in the comments.

Two years ago, I featured cooking affiliate programs as my Niche of the Week. My cooking has improved greatly since I wrote that article, and so I have moved on to learning baking. I decided this week, while searching for yet another pastry recipe to try, that I might as well feature baking as my Niche of the Week. 2 topics, 1 round of research. Yes. Because it’s fun to multi-task. 🙂

According to AmericanBakers.org, the baking industry accounts for about USD $300 billion in total economic output. More than a million Americans were employed, directly or indirectly, within the industry.

But never mind the statistics. Just head on over to Pinterest, or Google any recipe, and you’ll find plenty of websites full of baking recipes, clever decorating ideas, and tips to make your recipes turn out great. I’m telling you now, you’ll be competing with A LOT of other websites in this niche. A thorough research into the niche though will help you select a good angle for your site and map out a marketing strategy.

Keywords: Sharp and Piping Hot

Yes, that’s right. Forgive the mixed metaphors here, but the keywords in this niche need to be sharp, precise, on the point, like a good knife. You’ll know they are because they will be piping hot and highly competitive, too.

You can go for the general, information keywords like “baking,” “bread recipes,” or “pastry.” These are low competition keywords with good monthly search values.

How does this work then?

I suggest you get a good fusion of product-specific, buyer-intent, and informative how-to keywords. This means baking recipes and guides sprinkled with product reviews here and there.

Baking Affiliate Programs

As you probably know, I always check ClickBank before I venture out onto the web in search of affiliate programs. The ClickBank Marketplace did not disappoint this time. I was able to find several baking affiliate programs in the MarketPlace that are worth looking into.

Keikos-Cake.com

Professional pastry chef and instructor Keiko shares her knowledge of how to create delicious baked confections through her website. She offers site members exclusive video lessons and unique recipes, too.

The recurring commission is 50% per sale.

The Macaron Master

If Keiko’s shows you how to make scrumptious bakery goodies, The Macaron Master shows you how to make delicate macarons. Their step by step guide shows you how to master macaron making and turn it into a home business.

Commission is at 35% per sale.

Turning Cupcakes Into Cash

Macarons not your thing? How about cupcakes? Turning Cupcakes Into Cash is for cupcake lovers what The Macaron Master is to macaron fans. Learn how to make cupcakes, and turn it to cash.

Unlike The Macaron Master, each sale of this product gets you 50% commission.

Cake Decorating Business Secrets

Another home business that stems from a baking skill: cake decorating. This guide to making a business out of decorating cakes offers affiliates 75% commission per sale.

I have attempted to put together a map of content marketing tools available to online marketers. My hope is that this will help guide you through the many content marketing technologies and tools alike to the right one that fits your needs.

This Ultimate Content Marketing Tools List has been updated as of July 30, 2015 to include over fifty new tools and several new categories including advocate marketing, event marketing and Content Marketing Platforms.

Why am I doing thisThere has been a major growth of content marketing tools available to content marketers. While many of these tools have existed for years prior to the advent of content marketing and would normally be deemed as simply internet marketing tools, many of them are rechristening themselves as content marketing tools.

Yet many of these tools are quite different from each other and serve vastly different purposes within content marketing. Some technologies may help create content, some may help distribute your content, yet others may help you simply measure the effectiveness of your content marketing. Based on attending dozens of content marketing conferences over the years, I have seen most marketers, and even analysts, not know where to start or how to make sense of the universe of content marketing tools.

Hasn’t this been done before?A few dedicated folks have attempted to put together comprehensive collections of content marketing tools. But I have found each of these attempts to have fallen short in one regard or another. Some have been limiting in the amount of tools they covered, while others have been comprehensive but have not grouped the tools together in an intuitive manner.

Regardless here’s a list of honorable mentions of people and organizations who have done this in the past:

Everything PR. In January of 2013, Everything PR put together a list of 100 Content Marketing tools. While it’s one of the most comprehensive lists, I have seen, it doesn’t strictly list “tools” in the sense of technologies. Many of the entries are resource sites and blogs such as the Content Rules Blog or events such as Content Marketing World 2013. While such resources can be helpful for marketers, they are not strictly tools. The list also makes no attempt to organize and group together tools.

Eloqua. In December of 2012, Eloqua published an infographic called the Social Business Shift. While it’s a nice graphic, it doesn’t strictly focus on content marketing and instead focuses on tools with a social component such as Kiva and Kickstarter for crowd funding or Taleo for talent sourcing.

Altimeter. In April of 2013, Rebecca Lieb of Altimeter started a list of 15 content marketing vendors. We were flattered to have Curata included in the initial list. More recently, Altimeter has published a content marketing vendor landscape that includes over 100 tools. However, this list does not include some of the broader categories we have included here.

Content Amp. Also in April of 2013, Content Amp, a UK based content marketing agency created an impressive and visually appealing infographic with a wide variety of content marketing tools with an attempt at groupings as well. While this is perhaps the best map of the content marketing vendor set I have seen, it is still lacking in the number of vendors covered and the categories. For example, it missed content curation tools entirely and has a confusing category called Curated Content & Forums that including technologies such as the commenting system Disqus, which have no relevance to curated content. The infographic is not strictly restricted to “tools” and has a category for content marketing agencies (which also includes Content Amp).

DisclaimerI have been piecing together this graphic for several months now, but it’s hard to keep up with the rapidly evolving space of content marketing tools. Here are a few disclaimers and areas where things could be better.

It’s not comprehensive. For every tool you see in the map, there is a long tail many other tools that are similar or performs parts of functions of the tool included in the graphic. I have tried to include the tools that I feel stand out the most of their categories. For a further breakdown of some of these categories, see the following lists:

It’s not as clear cut as it seems. There are many tools that fall into multiple categories, but I have placed them in the category that represents them the best. For example, Marketing AI measures analytics for your content, then helps you better optimize your content. In this case, should Marketing AI fall into Analytics or Optimization tools group? In this case, I placed them in the Analytics group. However, Parse.ly is a relatively similar tools, which I decided to place into the Optimization category.

It’s not complete. I am sure there are entire categories missing here. I hope you will recommend and suggest additions to this map.

Docalytics – Cloud-based platform that allows departments across a company to view documents, review analytics and track leads.

Simplereach – By collecting real-time data, this tool helps track the impact of digital content and allows users to gain insight into what direction they should take their created content strategy.

Parse.ly – This predictive analytics tool empowers publishers to track the performance of authors or topics, capitalize on web trends, promote in-demand content, and tap into the potential of recommended topics.

Trial Fire – This visual editor for analytics helps marketers circumvent coding their website in order to put tracking on different pages.

Social Media Analytics

Curalate – This tool uses data to allow users to discover which images in Pinterest and Instagram are most engaging for their audiences.

Compete – Gain insight into the competition by examining what websites and keywords others are using to drive traffic online, compiling lists of the top websites based on a variety of metrics, and tracking online market share by industry.

Pardot – This lead management tool lets marketers and salespeople move prospects through the sales funnel by creating automated targeted messaging that based on prospects’ activity.

Genius – Sales and marketing people can collaborate using this online-sales lead tracking software system to send personalized campaigns, see who’s visiting the website or opening emails, and assess prospect interest for follow up.

Silverpop – Using this digital marketing platform that unifies marketing automation, email, social media, and mobile, marketers can carry conversations across multiple devices and measure return on relationships.

Bislr – With this marketing automation tool, users can draw collaborative automated campaigns on a whiteboard, listen to prospect behavior and create database prospects through social media hashtags and keywords.

Route – This tool serves as a marketing and sales automation system to convert leads into customers.

Right On Interactive – This lifecycle marketing automation software uses a Customer Lifecycle Map™ to help their users visualize where their prospects and customers are in their lifecycle/journey with the organization.

MailChimp – Use this email marketing software to create a subscriber base, automate and personalize emails.

Sales Enablement

Seismic – This tool helps users make sure all of their content is up to date and relevant to create polished presentations and forecasts.

Savo – Savo benchmarks users’ sales enablement process against the industry they’re in and has a set of integrated sales enablement tools to accompany an organization’s existing process.

Docurated – This tool helps to create presentations with repurposed content and surfaces users’ most relevant content to be included.

Postwire – This solution helps marketers post, edit and share various types of content on their page and manage relevant content for their sales teams in one spot.

Qvidian – These sales enablement solutions help businesses reduce the sales team onboarding time and allow these teams to collaborate more efficiently.

Jive Software – This software allows teams across a company to collaborate in one workspace to get collateral out the door quickly, stay organized and better enable sales.

SalesFusion – Use SalesFusion to align marketing and sales with lead scoring, marketing automation and much more. This tool that was created specifically for mid-sized B2B companies.

Social Media Management & Listening

Sprinklr – Large global companies use this social media management system to engage with customers, connect with CRM systems, build custom widgets, publish and manage content, and more.

Tweetdeck – Track brand mentions and hashtags, manage multiple Twitter accounts, schedule Tweets, and more all in a single Twitter platform.

Hootsuite – Manage multiple social media accounts, analyze social media traffic, track brand mentions, collaborate with other team members, and schedule messages and tweets through this social media management tool.

Buffer – Add articles, photos, and video, and this social media tool will automatically post the content on your social media accounts throughout the day.

Topsy Pro – This tool allows users to track tweets over the last several years, discovering popular topics, trends and experts.

Social Bro – Follow trends on Twitter and capitalize upon them with this fully functioning twitter listening and publishing tool.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud – Find and analyze what’s being said about your brand, along with your competitors, with this monitoring tool to find out what customers want, what content is working and how to keep up with the conversation.

Social Mention – Social search engine that searches for and analyzes real-time aggregated content across 100+ social media platforms.

Bottlenose – Users are able to track what’s trending in their industry and get warnings about breaking news stories using advanced topic discovery and NLP (Natural Language Processing).

LinkedIn – A business-focused online network that includes features such as sharing links, adding connections, joining groups, writing recommendations, searching for connections by company, industry, skills, and more.

Google+ – Google’s social network that allows users to set up hangouts using video chat, create “circles” of people for organizing contacts and targeting messaging, and more.

Offerpop – Offerpop is a social media platform for businesses to recruit, engage and convert customers.

PR Newswire – Distribute news releases to a global media database of more than 700,000 journalists and blogger contacts, monitor traditional and social media, and engage in real time with journalists, bloggers, and other influencers.

Papershare – Cloud-based promotional tool for content marketers that distributes to multiple channels and alerts marketing and sales teams when content is published. Leads are also integrated into salesforce and marketing automation softwares.

PixxFly – Automate the distribution and syndication of all your content with this outbound marketing automation solution.

Influencer Marketing Tools

Traackr – Manage influencer relationships with this tool, which lets users discover influencers, nurture relationships and then demonstrate the impact of these relationships.

Little Bird – With this social monitoring tool, users can create lists of peer-validation ranked influencers across social platforms on various topics to stay on top of the conversation in their industry.

BuzzSumo – This content performance analysis tool can be used to identify the influencers who are creating popular, newsworthy content.

Klout – Klout scores social media users’ influence on a 100-point scale and takes into account platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WordPress and LinkedIn.

Appinions – This software analyzes and reports on industry topics, influencers, and social channels so users can best decide what topic to write about, which influencers to target, and where to distribute content.

Exposely – Exposely pairs brands with influencers who are willing to sell advertising space on their social channels and other owned platforms.

Tap Influence – This marketplace makes it easy for brands to identify and communicate with social media influencers and collaborate on content creation.

Kred – Users can identify social media influencers with Kred, which measures influence based on Twitter and Facebook output.

Advocate Marketing Tools

GaggleAMP – Amplify social media efforts with this tool that allows you to create “gaggles” of people who can share company social media updates to their followers.

SocialChorus – Create brand ambassadors out of employees, customers and partners with this tool that allows for the amplification of social media posts.

Amplifinity – This tool creates advocacy programs across several mediums such as email, direct mail and social media.

EveryoneSocial – Allow employees and customers to build their own social profiles while simultaneously sharing your company’s created and curated content.

SoAmpli – Encourage employees to become brand advocates with this tool that helps you feed content to employees and reward them accordingly.

Influitive – Create an army of advocates with this tool that fosters a community of customers to share your content across various platforms.

As we’ve already seen today, affiliate marketing is a relatively trouble-free way for bloggers and other website owners to earn money. In fact, these days, even social media sites can become lucrative platforms for affiliate marketing campaigns.

Because affiliate marketing doesn’t require affiliates to offer their own products or services for purchase, but only to place promotions on their sites for other merchants’ products, it frees affiliates from many of the responsibilities and complications of traditional sales models.

Affiliate marketing programs typically work by having the merchant handle all the logistics involved in selling products or services, processing customer orders and payments, and shipping merchandise—all while the affiliate sits back and collects a commission for each agreed-upon action completed by the visitors the affiliate sends to the merchant’s website via an affiliate link. As long as the affiliate has done her homework and chosen a trustworthy affiliate program, she needn’t worry about non-payment.

Affiliate networks administer programs for individual merchants, handling all the work involved, while generally providing tracking and reporting capabilities to their affiliates to help them keep tabs on their revenues and determine which products or services are producing the best returns. These tools can be helpful to an affiliate in fine-tuning the line of products she decides to promote on her site and, ideally, increasing revenues as a result.

However, all affiliate programs are not created equal. Which are the most popular programs available today?

Reportedly the largest affiliate network, with over 10 million affiliate partnerships, LinkShare took the number-one spot in the Blue Book of Top 20 Affiliate Networks for platform strength, support quality, and international capabilities.

LinkShare offers over 2,500 affiliate programs and lets you choose whether to have every aspect of your affiliate channel managed for you or whether you would rather manage your own program using the company’s various service and support options.

Said to be the largest affiliate marketing network in North America (though it operates globally) and claiming the number-two spot in the Blue Book of Top 20 Affiliate Networks for being “the best at balancing the relationship between the merchants, the network, and the affiliates,” California-based Commission Junction, owned by ValueClick, Inc., offers affiliate, media, and tracking services and provides either a self-management or company-managed option for your affiliate relationships.

In addition to its regular pay-per-action affiliate program, the company also offers a convenient PayPerCall program to help affiliates “ensure they get paid commission for the leads they generate, thus further monetizing existing ad placements and having the opportunity to expand their promotional…online and offline campaigns.”

Claiming the number-three spot in the Blue Book of Top 20 Affiliate Networks for being the “overall best performance marketing network in the world today,” Chicago-based ShareASale has over 2,500 merchant programs and features brands such as HootSuite and PS Print.

ShareASale has received excellent ratings, with the company’s reputation/security, ethics, customer service, and ease of commission payment receiving glowing reviews.

Placing fourth in the Blue Book of Top 20 Affiliate Networks, for a reporting system that “far surpasses other big networks,” this is one of the largest and most diverse affiliate programs available.

As most people know, Amazon.com offers such a wide array of products that there’s bound to be something to fit your niche. In fact, they offer over a million products from which you can choose to monetize your website or blog. Amazon Associates is a pay-per-sale affiliate program.

Google Affiliate Network is a pay-per-action network that pays commissions to its affiliates for driving conversions (sales or leads). The network requires a Google AdSense account for posting ads to the affiliate’s website or blog and facilitating affiliate payments.

ClixGalore is an Australian PPA (pay-per-action) affiliate network that also has offices in the US, UK, and Japan. The company offers various types of programs, including PPM (pay-per-impression), PPL (pay per lead), PPS (pay-per-sale), and PPC (pay-per-click). Many programs pay in US dollars.

Some well-known brands that use ClixGalore for their affiliate offerings are Bluehost, Time Life, Trend Micro, Citibank, and Fox Sports Shop. While not as widely known as some of the other affiliate networks, ClixGalore is a solid network that offers thousands of potential merchant programs. The network also offers a two-tier network. By referring other affiliates to the network, current affiliates can receive a portion of their earnings.

PeerFly is a PPA network with its own proprietary software system. The network made the Blue Book of Top 20 Affiliate Networks, which stated regarding them, “They are courteous, helpful, and point you in the right direction.”

The network also took the number-four spot in the Blue Book of Top 20 CPA Networks, for its high popularity, great staff, and excellent platform. PeerFly accepts publishers from all over the world and offers thousands of merchant programs.

A well-known affiliate network, ClickBank features digital products, such as e-books, software, and membership sites. The program reportedly offers up to 75% commissions on its tens of thousands of products. Commissions are paid weekly, and direct deposit is available to its affiliates.

MaxBounty came in sixth in the Blue Book of Top 20 CPA Networks, though it didn’t make a showing in the Blue Book’s top 20 affiliate networks. In business since 2004, the network was founded on the philosophy of paying its affiliates more.

MaxBounty pays affiliate commissions weekly, and the company appears to have a good reputation among its affiliates. In fact, the network is popular among many top affiliate marketers and has received numerous positive reviews and writeups and critiques over the past several years.

Neverblue is a pay-per-action affiliate program that pays its affiliates for lead, download, and sale generation, as well as for new affiliate referrals. While Neverblue didn’t make the Blue Book of Top 20 Affiliate Networks, it did take the number-one spot in the Blue Book of Top 20 CPA Networks.

Despite this, the affiliate program has stated the following: “This filing will not impact Neverblue’s ability to meet client needs in any way—we intend to continue to operate business as usual without interruption. Neverblue’s business is fundamentally strong and we intend to make all affiliate payments on schedule, in a timely and reliable manner.”

Its management is just as confident that the sale will not affect Neverblue’s ability to meet its affiliates’ needs in any way. While this company tends to inspire high confidence among affiliates, you’ll have to decide whether to jump in now or wait a while to see how things go after the sale.

What’s your favorite network?

If you’ve been thinking of trying affiliate marketing to monetize your blog, consider testing these ten programs to see whether they fit your niche and audience. If you’ve used any of these programs, we’d love to hear your thoughts on them in the comments.

Two years ago, I featured cooking affiliate programs as my Niche of the Week. My cooking has improved greatly since I wrote that article, and so I have moved on to learning baking. I decided this week, while searching for yet another pastry recipe to try, that I might as well feature baking as my Niche of the Week. 2 topics, 1 round of research. Yes. Because it’s fun to multi-task. 🙂

According to AmericanBakers.org, the baking industry accounts for about USD $300 billion in total economic output. More than a million Americans were employed, directly or indirectly, within the industry.

But never mind the statistics. Just head on over to Pinterest, or Google any recipe, and you’ll find plenty of websites full of baking recipes, clever decorating ideas, and tips to make your recipes turn out great. I’m telling you now, you’ll be competing with A LOT of other websites in this niche. A thorough research into the niche though will help you select a good angle for your site and map out a marketing strategy.

Keywords: Sharp and Piping Hot

Yes, that’s right. Forgive the mixed metaphors here, but the keywords in this niche need to be sharp, precise, on the point, like a good knife. You’ll know they are because they will be piping hot and highly competitive, too.

You can go for the general, information keywords like “baking,” “bread recipes,” or “pastry.” These are low competition keywords with good monthly search values.

How does this work then?

I suggest you get a good fusion of product-specific, buyer-intent, and informative how-to keywords. This means baking recipes and guides sprinkled with product reviews here and there.

Baking Affiliate Programs

As you probably know, I always check ClickBank before I venture out onto the web in search of affiliate programs. The ClickBank Marketplace did not disappoint this time. I was able to find several baking affiliate programs in the MarketPlace that are worth looking into.

Keikos-Cake.com

Professional pastry chef and instructor Keiko shares her knowledge of how to create delicious baked confections through her website. She offers site members exclusive video lessons and unique recipes, too.

The recurring commission is 50% per sale.

The Macaron Master

If Keiko’s shows you how to make scrumptious bakery goodies, The Macaron Master shows you how to make delicate macarons. Their step by step guide shows you how to master macaron making and turn it into a home business.

Commission is at 35% per sale.

Turning Cupcakes Into Cash

Macarons not your thing? How about cupcakes? Turning Cupcakes Into Cash is for cupcake lovers what The Macaron Master is to macaron fans. Learn how to make cupcakes, and turn it to cash.

Unlike The Macaron Master, each sale of this product gets you 50% commission.

Cake Decorating Business Secrets

Another home business that stems from a baking skill: cake decorating. This guide to making a business out of decorating cakes offers affiliates 75% commission per sale.